


we'll search for tomorrow on every shore

by tfm



Series: Come Sail Away [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beau wants to run away and be a pirate sort of, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24145051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: Once upon a time, Beau didn't stop in Trostenwald. She kept going south, to the ocean she'd been dreaming of since she was young.
Series: Come Sail Away [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1746121
Comments: 1
Kudos: 38





	we'll search for tomorrow on every shore

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is the result of several things mentioned in game that haven't been explored to their fullest extent:  
> -Beau saying she used to really be into mermaids and underwater stuff  
> -Marisha saying Beau's dad wouldn't let her learn how to fence  
> -Beau really coming into her own during the pirate arc, and asking to be trained as first mate  
> -Stillness of Mind, and meditating in Nicodranas  
> -And, in more recent episodes, Beau indicating that she's actually really happy on the ocean.
> 
> So here's a nice little oneshot where instead of joining the Mighty Nein, Beau becomes a sailor instead. Will there be more? I doubt it, but I've said that before and continued stuff so anything goes.

we'll search for tomorrow on every shore

Trostenwald was small.

In a lot of ways, it reminded Beau of Kamordah; a few families being the major players in the brewing industry, undercutting the others, stealing supplies and trade secrets. It didn’t look nearly as shitty a place to live as Kamordah though, and, even though it was on the banks of a large lake, the streets didn’t seem to turn into rivers of mud when it rained.

Overall, though, a simple town, with pretty good beer. She managed to scrounge together a few silver for lunch, and a pint of von Brandt Trost. It wasn’t half bad, considering her palette was more used to high-end wines, and whatever cheap liquor she’d been able to get her hands on in Zadash. The meal wasn’t much to write home about – meat, and bread, and cheese – but it was better than starving.

On her way out of town, Beau took a cursory look at the board of jobs. There wasn’t really anything that looked appealing. She hadn’t run away from a life of strictness and structure to come to Trostenwald to move boxes around.

It was still early enough in the day that she could put a bit more walking time in. There was no question of whether she would make it to the Wuyun Gates, but if she got far enough today, and got an early start in the mornings, then she would probably make it there by the end of the week.

She had no plans to stay and go to the fucking circus, at least.

On the way out of town, Beau saw a tiefling and a half-orc, chatting animatedly as they made their way in the opposite direction. Beau caught a tiny snippet of the conversation. ‘—his name is the Traveler, and he is just the greatest God ever—’ The half-orc had a look on his face that was half-exasperated, half-enthralled. Beau gave a slight smirk, and kept on walking.

The road south was much the same as it had been from Alfield. Fields of wheat, and barley, and other kinds of grain. Rolling hills dotted with weeds and wildflowers. Clusters of rocks and trees and small ponds. It was nice. At around six o’clock, she found a decent-sized tree a little way off the road, that she could spend the night in.

Being the middle of Sydenstar, it was a warm night. Warm enough that she didn’t even bother climbing into her bedroll. She had a quick meal of dried fruit and jerky; not exactly palatial, but she was hungry enough that it might as well have been a feast.

Sleep came easily enough, the same way it had almost every night since leaving Zadash. There was something to be said about walking twelve hours a day to make you exhausted.

The good news was, she didn’t have too much more of it to worry about. Once she got to Nicodranas, she would look for work there, maybe as a deckhand, or a general sort of shit-kicker. Having grown up in a landlocked town, Beau had never even seen the ocean, but she was a pretty good climber, and she could keep books like nobody’s business. Surely there would be someone, somewhere along the coast looking to hire. If not in Nicodranas, then maybe Port Zoon, or Port Damali.

Nicodranas was bigger than she’d expected. Not nearly as big as Zadash, of course, but much bigger than Trostenwald, or Alfield, or Kamordah.

It was late morning when Beau finally made it there, reaching the peak of the last hill, and realizing, over the course of a full minute, that she was staring out over the wide expanse of the Lucidian Ocean.

The pictures in the books she’d read were nothing – _nothing_ – compared to this. It stretched on as far as the eye could see, punctuated only by the occasional ship, or island, and the color – the _color –_ was far more intense, far more beautiful than any artist could have ever painted it. The site of it gave Beau a huge rush of energy, the exhaustion that had overcome her in climbing the hill all but forgotten.

Nicodranas was a sight in and of itself. “The jewel of the Menagerie Coast,” the books told her. Even the name meant “gathering of colors,” in Draconic, and it did not take much thinking to figure out why. The rooftops of the city were a jumble of color, some bearing flags and banners, some with clothes pinned up to dry, some crawling with greenery.

A strange bead of hope rose in Beau’s chest. An almost unfamiliar feeling that she hadn’t felt in a very long time. She was a long way from home, a long way from Zadash, a long way from anywhere that she had ever been, and she was alone. That, at least, was nothing new, but with any luck, would change over the next few days.

It was weird. As a kid – fuck, even as a teenager – she’d loved talking to people. Every single day she’d snuck out of the Estate and down to the vinery, to talk to the workers, to hear about what they were doing, and how they did it. She learned about barrel-making, about vine-pruning, about all the good swearwords in Halfling. Her father had quashed all of that. Had punished her for leaving the house, for talking to people that he thought might hurt her, for generally doing things that he didn’t want her doing.

The weird thing was, she still _liked_ hanging around with people, even if she had gotten really bad at it. The problem was, no-one really liked hanging out with her. Even at the Cobalt Soul, where she was happier than she had ever been in Kamordah, the other acolytes had treated her like an idiot (which she wasn’t) and a delinquent (which she was).

But hey, the best thing about being in a completely new place was that she could be whoever she wanted to be. She could be a merchant from Rexxentrum, or a traveling bard from Hupperdook (though, with no cart, and no instrument, either of those two options would have been hard to believe). Really, though, the best story was the one that was probably closest to the truth; that she was a wayward soul, searching for purpose, and for comradery. It was weird that she had spent so much of her life trying to lie that the truth seemed like some faraway, distant sort of thing.

Beau made her way down the hill towards the outer walls of the city. At the gate leading in, there were about half a dozen Zholezo, standing around looking bored. Her arrival seemed like it might be the most interesting thing that had happened so far that day. But Beau wasn’t headed for the city gates; at least not right away.

She went straight to the water, and, slipping her boots off, took her first steps onto sizzling hot sand. If Beau hadn’t spent half her childhood running across the boiling hot rocks of Kamordah’s geysers, she would have maybe been a little more bothered by it. As it was, her attention was taken up entirely by the waves crashing against the shore. In and out and in and out. _Crash, crash, crash_.

She had never been particularly good at meditating, back at the Soul, but standing here, watching the ocean…Beau’s mind emptied, and she felt freer than she had in a very long time. So free, that she didn’t notice the footsteps of the person coming up right behind her, until he stepped to her side. She jumped, and grabbed for her staff, before realizing that it was just an old man. He had the ruddy, weather-beaten skin that she expected most people who spent a lot of time in the sun, or out on the water to have. The same weather-beaten skin that many of the workers in Kamordah had.

‘Everything alright there, lass?’ the man asked. Beau tried to reach for a snappy retort, but found that she didn’t have one.

‘Yeah,’ she said, in an unexpectedly choked voice. ‘I just…I didn’t realize it made a sound.’

He chuckled. ‘Oh, it makes lots of sound. In the dead of night, when you’re trying to get the storm sails up, with the wind lashing, and the ship rocking. You’ll hear and see things you’ll have nightmares about for the rest of your life.’

There was a beat of silence. ‘Awesome.’ Beau said. ‘You know anyone that’s hiring?’

The ship (he chastised her for saying boat) that he directed her to was called _Mimic’s Malady_ , a mid-sized merchant vessel that was in the middle of loading crates when Beau walked up to it.

‘Hey,’ she called out to a dwarven woman that looked like she had some measure of authority. She was telling the rest of them what to do, at any rate. The old man (Jock) had said her name was Marnie. Marnie had that same weather-beaten skin, and was wearing a long dark coat that looked as though it had seen better days.

‘Can I help you?’ the woman asked, sounding a little doubtful, and Beau half-winced. Maybe she should have bought some clothes that didn’t paint her so clearly as a monk of the Cobalt Soul. Not because the Soul had a bad reputation, but more because it was a little harder to pretend to be someone else, if you were wearing an old uniform.

‘I heard you were looking for sailors.’

Marnie surveyed her, running an eye over the staff, and the bared abs, and maybe probably the arm muscles. ‘You know anything about being on the water?’

‘Not a godsdamned thing,’ Beau said, brusquely. ‘Saw the ocean for the first time an hour ago.’

Marnie chuckled. ‘It does tend to have that effect on people,’ she said. ‘Can you fight with a sword?’

‘Not with a sword, but I’m pretty good with a stick.’

‘Yeah, I don’t doubt it.’ She coughed, or it least it would have sounded like a cough to anyone that didn’t speak Dwarvish. In Common, it translated to something equivalent to “motherfucker.”

‘You kiss your mother with that mouth?’ Beau had asked the question before she could stop herself.

Marnie stared. Impressed, but trying to look like she wasn’t. ‘Listen, kid, if you’re looking for a captain that doesn’t curse up a storm, you’re gonna be looking for a long fucking time.’

‘Nah, I don’t give a fuck about that.’ Beau grinned. Already this was starting to look like her kind of place.

‘You speak anything other than Dwarvish?’

‘Sure. Halfling, Elvish, Deep Speech…’ Marnie raised an eyebrow.

‘Come across a few Beholders in your time?’

Beau hadn’t. Like the ocean, she had read about aberrations in books, and figured that Deep Speech would be a cool language to learn. She hadn’t yet had the occasion to use it in real life. Out in the Lucidian Ocean, it seemed unlikely that she would get to try it out. Not unless they came across an Aboleth or something. She shrugged. ‘Seemed more fun than learning Goblin.’

Marnie’s eyes narrowed, and Beau couldn’t tell what the fuck she was thinking. Finally, she said, ‘You’re a bit old for a cabin girl, but I suppose you’ll do. The pay is shit, the food is shit, and the work is shit, but every now and then you’ll be so terrified you think you’re gonna die.’

For Beau, who had spent every day of the last three years getting beaten up and not paid for it, that didn’t seem like that bad of a deal. ‘You can teach me how to fight with a sword, though, right.’

Marnie laughed, and clapped her on the shoulder. Or at least tried to – given that Beau was two feet taller, it was more of a clap on the elbow. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Beau,’ Beau told her.

‘Alright, Beau,’ she said. ‘I think you’ll fit in just fine.’


End file.
